Category: Uncategorized

December 9, 2008

Episodic Powers

In comics, pulps, cartoons, some episodic TV shows, and similar sources, it is often the case that the hero will display some ability or tactic that he or she has never used before. Even though it might be a generally useful and effective thing to do, it may never show up again. If we wanted to, we could easily incorporate...

December 8, 2008

Playing for the endgame

How many times have you heard people say that, in D&D 3.5, it doesn’t pay to multi-class with a spellcaster because it would inhibit your ability to get 9th level spells? How about telling you not to take a particular feat because it will be useless after 15th level? …or that you should take several sub-par feats because, at high...

December 3, 2008

Giddyap Rhino

Over the weekend, while visiting my parents in Maryland for Thanksgiving, Angela and I were able to skip down to DC for a bit. We poked our head in to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, where we spent most of our time in the prehistoric mammals exhibit. Prehistoric mammals are pretty darn cool. One thing that struck me was...

November 25, 2008

More lessons from the Wasteland

I’ve been playing a lot of Fallout 3 lately. Parts of it are brilliant. Parts of it suffer in contrast to the brilliant bits. I keep thinking of it in comparison to a tabletop RPG, and thinking about what could have been done better on the tabletop and what couldn’t have been done at all on the tabletop. Here are...

November 24, 2008

Storytime: last night’s game

I swear, our party isn’t made up of PCs. I’m pretty sure we’re a wandering encounter. Last night, in Angela’s game, we went through our first real(ish) dungeon. Yes, we’ve been playing for two years, and we’re 10th level now. …and, yeah, the dungeon is actually above ground (going up, actually), made of glass, and inhabited by good guys (who...

November 24, 2008

Beyond Alignment: Adding Moral Complexity to your Game (Reprint)

Reposted from 9/4/07 This article first appeared in the Silven Trumpeter (Vol. 4, Issue 2, June 2006). Many people play roleplaying games in order to escape from the moral ambiguity of real life. They want to sit down, roll some dice, kill some goblins, take their stuff, and feel good about it. Perhaps the only personal growth that they are...

November 22, 2008

Naming Characters

I have a lot of trouble deciding on PC names. I often turn to Kate Monk’s Onomastikon for help. If you aren’t familiar with it, check it out. I also look at baby naming websites. Many of these have name-meanings attached, which is often a plus. Today, via Lifehacker, I found What A Lovely Name, which allows you to start...

November 20, 2008

Help a child. Get a gaming tool.

A bit over a year ago, I mentioned the XO laptop as a possible gaming tool. Amazon is once again having their Give a Laptop, Get a Laptop offer where you spend $399 and get two XOs – one for yourself and one which is shipped to a child in a developing country. I didn’t get the XO last year...

November 19, 2008

On the use of treasure…

In the beginning, we killed things and took their stuff. Some of us still do that. Others of us got this crazy idea that maybe our PCs could do some other things and have some complex motivations. What’s the role of treasure in a game that follows that second path? Is it a reward? If so, it isn’t really the...

November 13, 2008

Game scheduling tool?

At work, I’ve used web apps to schedule meetings between a bunch of people with busy schedules, but it never occurred to me to use such things to schedule a game. I know some campaigns out there (I’m in one at the moment) don’t have a set meeting time – the players get together when they can. Often, though, these...